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Sunday, August 24, 2014

Nivedita Sarkar and Anuneeta Mitra

The contribution of education in economic development
has been investigated since the early 1960s, originating inthe University of Chicago (Schultz, 1961; Becker, 1964), championed
by the Human Capital School – in which expenditure on education is regarded as
an investment. It was argued through the endogenous growth theory (Lucas, 1988;
Romer, 1990) that spending in education is crucial for increasing labour productivity
and accelerating the pace of economic growth. Over the last three decades it
has also been proven beyond doubt through numerous empirical researches that
individual earnings are positively associated with years of schooling along
with the fact that education confers a gamut of positive externalities to the
society. Therefore, the much discussed possibility of market failure associated
with positive externality brings forth the rationale for public intervention in
education. However, public spending in the form of subsidies, on higher
education is often argued to be highly inequitable
– advocating a drastic cut in subsidies (Psacharopoulos, 1994; World Bank,
1994). This view has gained currency of late and draws attention to the skewed
distribution of public subsidies in higher education, with its incidence shown
to be distinctly pro-rich. Therefore, spending meagre government resources to
finance the higher education of the rich is considered to be a colossal inefficient use of public money. Thus,
it is often strongly suggested that scarce government resources should be
redirected in favour of basic/primary education. In this article we attempt to
scrutinize whether curtailing public spending in higher education would help in
achieving the principle of equity? To do this we first investigate how much the
government spends on higher education anyway.

Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Sona Mitra

A book review of 'Caliban and the
Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation' by Silvia Federici, Phoneme,
New Delhi, 2013, pp. 285, Rs. 350.00

It is indeed ironical that I was reading to review this absolutely
brilliant book by Sylvia Federici around Halloween, which narrates the dark
saga of Witch Hunts in Europe during the 15th-17th
Century. In fact Witch-Hunts had consumed Europe for more than 200 years, a
practice that coincided with the rise of capitalism in Europe. In this
extremely thought-provoking book, Federici explores the origins of capitalism rooted
in the severity of oppression of workers and within that, in the brutal
subjugation of women.

Eminent Marxist thinker Prabhat Patnaik
reflects on some of the contemporary debates on Marxism in an interview with Satyaki
Roy.

Sunday, August 3, 2014

Abdul Rahman

Yet again Israel
is bombing Gaza.
This time too the number of dead Palestinians (till date) is as high as it was
the last time in 2009 during the Operation Cast Lead. The reasons of the
current attack is almost same if we are not bothered about the details, the
Israeli ‘right to self defence’ (whatever that means). Yet again the world
community namely the United Nations and leaders of the ‘big states’ are
‘worried’ about ‘the disproportionate use of violence’ by Israel. They all
agree that Israel has the
‘existential threats’ and Hamas should not ‘attack’ Israel with its ‘rockets’.
Meanwhile, surprisingly common people in all these countries and some of their leaders
with their backbones intact have tried to stood up and argue differently.

Editorial

How do we see the world? It is neither a gaze, nor is it to invent the predetermined truth, it is to intervene from a position. Our seeing is changing at the same time and without any claim to excavate the unadulterated truth that never existed.
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